


enemies to lovers

by thecaskofarmadillo



Category: Arctic Monkeys, Last Shadow Puppets, Miles Kane - Fandom
Genre: Angst, Cheesy, Cliche, Internal Monologue, M/M, Sappy, bad ultracheese pun, everything in this is cliche, miles reads some fan fiction on the net, only slight, please indulge me, probably monologuing, somebody should have stopped me from posting this probably, spontaneous speech that does not read as spontaneous, vague jerking off, very mild smut, why am i writing this again
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-30
Updated: 2019-06-14
Packaged: 2020-03-29 23:49:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 5,402
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19030447
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thecaskofarmadillo/pseuds/thecaskofarmadillo
Summary: Miles is amused by some fan fiction, but Alex is all angsty about them and Miles is not having it.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> this is my first fic for the fandom, it's also me procrastinating on a whole bunch of...life stuff, which means I have not checked this and it's pretty much just me vomiting on page so I'm genuinely sorry for that.

‘We’re not enemies, though.’ Miles chuckled at his laptop. 

He had been going through his emails and opened the stupid fan fiction that Zach allegedly read and thought was hilarious. He had a cup of tea next to him and a pillow under his bum that was perched on Alex’s wooden dining chair. He looked softer than usual; his glasses resting somewhere midway on his nose and his feet clad in big socks, a pale flannel shirt that stolen from Alex’s wardrobe buttoned only halfway and a tiny smirk on his lips. 

Alex watched him take a sip from the cup, watched his lips curl around the ceramic and knew they’d be chapped from the previous night of, albeit light, drinking, knew Miles wouldn’t have bothered using chapstick, same as he hadn’t bothered to shave that handsome five o’clock shadow. If he focused hard enough, he could imagine how those lips would feel on his, scratchy, and the stubble, too. Miles's long fingers that danced around the laptop’s touchpad, so soft and caring, yet Alex felt that only looking at them could strangle him. He caught himself holding his breath and promptly let it out. Sundays did this to him sometimes, but Miles was still waiting for an answer, if only a little more than a sound of acknowledgement. 

‘Are we not?’ he breathed out, expecting Miles to hardly listen to him, attention turned back to the screen.

But Miles heard him clearly, it seemed, as he left the fan fiction and turned on the pillow to face Alex that was splayed on the sofa. He was grinning from ear to ear and his eyebrows were raised in a question, or a dare. 

Alex shrugged, ‘Maybe we’re just pretending.’ 

‘What do you mean, you weirdo?’ Miles cackled and turned back to his reading.

‘Maybe we act like we’re friends for the sake of the fame and tha’.’ Alex smirked and stretched his legs onto the coffee table. 

‘Oh, cheeky.’ Miles turned his head to look at him, ‘You mean like when I stay at your house for days on end. Or when I find my shorts in your drawers, huh?’

Alex examined the loose thread on his t-shirt. ‘No,’ he smiled, ‘like when you always have to do me one better every time I kiss you on stage. Or when I don’t call for weeks at a time. When you make an effort to leave the room every time I’m with a girlfriend. Or the way you always cut yourself off in the middle of a sentence as you end the call,’ he stood and went into the kitchen, ‘And the other secrets you keep, like the men you invite into your bed, but we never talk about those, do we? Only about the girls,’ he put the kettle on, ‘Like when you smile and I want to punch your head in. Like that, we’re enemies.’ 

Miles hung his head in silence and then looked up at the laptop again. ‘But sometimes we’re lovers, aren’t we?’ 

Alex cleared his throat in response and Miles went over to him, stopping at the sink to rinse his cup. Alex didn’t move and Miles stood behind him, quite close, but not enough. 

Miles touched his back with one finger, accusing, as he made his way back to the table, ‘But we’re only lovers when you’re lonely. Only until you get scared and find someone again. But we’re still also lovers. When you kiss my neck in the back of a cab, we’re lovers.’ 

Alex blushed. He watched Miles close the window with the fan fiction and go back to reading his emails. On a Sunday, because the man was a weirdo. 

The water had boiled and so he poured it into the cup and leaned into the counter as he mashed the teabag with his spoon, watching the water get darker.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> you can find me on Tumblr at hemovesthemoon and yell at me about how shit my writing is and I'll open some wine and agree with you.


	2. Chapter 2

Alex was missing everything. Maybe because everything was slowly starting to feel like nothing and the only cure he knew was attaching to the first person that would have him and let them consume him until he could work out who he was again. Also maybe because he’d promised himself not to call Miles.

The same way he’d done so many times before. But the words echoed in his head, the hurt ‘we’re only lovers when you’re lonely’. Maybe good company got him high, so what. Only he was now coming to realise that the best on the market was maybe not on the market at all. Because Miles knew what they were, apparently. Apparently, Miles was fully aware of everything that was going on with them and had no problems dealing with it. Sometimes we’re lovers. Sometimes we’re enemies. Alex always imagined that he, too, hid those tiny smooches into a corner of his consciousness that only opened when they were together, pressed close and seemingly co-dependent. But Miles confronted them, pinned them on to a wall to reflect upon, and that made him strangely unreachable. 

And then maybe Alex couldn’t actually take having Miles all the time, everywhere, forever. Maybe that’s what the prolonged exposure and avoidance cycles he tended to fall into were all about. Not wanting to spoil the fun. 

Except when he avoided Miles, he still missed Miles. Even stood in that full pub, wrapped in his jacket and all the pretence he could muster, exchanging looks with a brunette across the room wile his friends chatted away, he still felt naked when there wasn’t a finger poking at his ribs, or a hand mussing up his hair as if he hadn’t grown up from being nineteen at all. 

Something made Alex shiver and so he quickly downed his drink in order to pretend it was the alcohol doing that to him, and not the realisation that settled over his mind and mixed with the vodka as it dropped into his stomach. 

Maybe he just…wanted Miles. 

Because despite what Miles had said, they were not lovers. The most intimate they’d get was that odd kiss in the back of a dark car, their legs brushing under the covers as they tried to usurp a bit more of warmth. It was always fingers carding through hair and a guiding palm at the back of his neck. It was never urgent, hot, and wet, it was always brotherly. 

With utter horror and embarrassment, Alex concluded that he wanted to have sex with Miles.

Alex smiled into the void of the smoky atmosphere. As bad as he felt about lusting after his best mate, he felt relieved in discovering that that bile that he kept having to swallow for what felt like years, and what he’d called being enemies that one Sunday, was maybe just misguided attraction and frustration. 

It suddenly felt so light that the atmosphere of the bar no longer felt comfortable and Alex opted for the door before he could really think about it any further. He got a cab home and revelled in his elated state, his eyelids getting comfortably heavy and his heart feeling light. 

His flat was empty and deliciously silent after the loud scene in the pub. Alex toed his shoes off and headed straight for the couch, throwing himself on it, limbs splayed in all kinds of directions and head hanging off one end.

He should call Miles. 

That thought caught Alex off and he quickly decided that it would not be a good idea. Certainly not after releasing he wanted them to shag. Certainly not when he was horny. Horny was just another word for lonely anyway, right?

But the image of Miles was already stuck in his head, all muscle and sweat and long limbs and so what. He rolled off the couch and headed for the shower, shrugging his jacket off on the way and letting the rest of his garments litter the bathroom floor. He let the water run and leaned against the wall as he spit on his hand and turned his attention to his half-hard cock. 

Not like it was the first time he jerked off to Miles. It was definitely the first time he didn’t lie to himself about it, though. It did give him more freedom. Now he was aware of how his breath quickened once he started reflecting on Miles and his body, how it’d feel taut behind Alex, how his fingers would feel trailing down Alex’s back, around his cock, fingering his ass. How they’d get switched for his cock and then travel into his hair instead, pulling on it, low voice raspy in his ear and he’d be kept in place and crowded and loomed over by Miles, the drag of his cock constant and unrelenting and then he’d be coming. No, he was coming. 

He got out and put himself to bed. It was so early Alex felt like somebody ought to have come read him a bedtime story. He would have been extremely thankful for that, really, because once he settled, his mind switched into full gear and could not stop dancing around the fact that he did really want to have sex with Miles. The thought that he hadn’t fully considered until then, though: he wanted Miles to shag him.


	3. Chapter 3

They were sat in one of their favourite places with a couple of friends. It had been a cautious fight on Alex’s end not to call whenever he felt the sting of loneliness in his heart. He wasn’t sure if he was trying to prove some point to Miles or if he was conducting an experiment at that point. Because it stung, hearing Miles complain about not being his first choice. It shouldn’t have, because Miles was never supposed to be his choice in a line of lovers, but it did, and the more Alex reflected upon it, the more he wished Miles had never let those words out in the first place. 

And then it had been an experiment because aside from work, the fight to avoid phoning Miles had also been fought with the men in Alex’s bed, every one of them like a new litmus strip testing how much Alex would think about Miles’s fingers when the ones working him open weren’t Miles’s at all, and how much more lonely he would feel the morning after, looking at an empty space beside him. 

Turns out, he’d thought about Miles a lot. He was thinking about Miles even as the man sat opposite him in the booth, in flesh. Alex hadn’t called him, it was a mutual friend, that was getting drinks at the bar. Alex focussed on the glass in front of him and tried to figure out if either one of them could be called drunk. It definitely seemed to have to be a stretch. A part of Alex wished he was drunk, because maybe then he could blame that for how difficult it was to tear his eyes away from Miles. Everything about him seemed enthralling. The stubble, the freshly cut hair, the hands adorned with rings, the shirt. It was a mix of textures Alex wished to feel for himself, to test out how well they reacted with his skin, the cool rings and the hot fingers, the beer-soaked lips and the stubble. 

On the other hand, if they weren’t drunk, Miles couldn’t throw that among his accusations that he seemed to be so at peace with. How did one accuse the other of not giving themselves completely with the resignation that Miles had had that Sunday afternoon? What did that mean?

Whatever it meant, it didn’t stop Alex from tugging at Miles’s sleeve as he was about to follow the group outside for a smoke. He tugged and then he pulled until Miles got the hint and settled next to Alex on the seat with a smirk. 

‘Long time no see.’ Miles poked him in the arm with a relaxed finger. 

Involuntarily, Alex smiled, ‘I was a bit lonely.’

Miles’s eyebrows raised and Alex turned a bit, to look him in the eyes, but had to settle for his Adam’s apple instead. 

‘But…then I wasn’t anymore,’ Alex watched that Adam’s apple move and inched closer, his nose at Miles’s jaw, ‘and I still missed you.’

Miles moved back to rest his head against the back of the booth and patted Alex’s thigh as he did so. He gave a smile, a genuine one, ‘I missed you, too.’

But Alex didn’t feel he understood well enough. He took Miles’s hand from where it was resting next to his thigh and pressed himself close to Miles’s side. 

‘and I still wanted you,’ he whispered, despite not meaning to lower his voice. 

Miles took in a breath. He got his hand on Alex’s jaw gently. ‘Alex,’ he said like Alex was being unreasonable, then he sighed again, ‘why do you want this?’

Alex leaned into Miles’s palm, his forehead partly resting against the booth now, too, and locked his eyes on Miles’s. 

‘You said we were only lovers when I was lonely,’ Alex said and watched Miles remember. 

‘I’m not lonely anymore,’ he moved so he could glide his nose across Miles’s jaw, ‘let’s be lovers now.’ And he inched his nose up so that it touched Miles's now, lips close and just waiting for Miles to make the decision and move his head.  
There was a couple of seconds when Alex anxiously pondered turning away before Miles gave in, placed his gentle hand on Alex’s jaw again and kissed him.

As soon as Miles placed his lips on his, Alex felt himself melt, releasing a breath and closing his eyes. He let Miles linger there and then kissed him back, a bit more eagerly than planned, but Miles didn’t seem to mind. He soon depended the kiss, making Alex smile excitedly and sigh into his mouth as he moved to be able to touch Miles’s hip where his shirt failed to cover it. It was Miles’s turn to smile and pull away shortly, catching his breath. 

Alex felt like he ought to process the fact that he was kissing Miles on the mouth and how proud that was making him feel, but there wasn’t much time for that as he watched Miles lick his lips and felt his arm sneak its way around his waist, however awkward the position was. Alex leaned in again, testing if Miles had not changed his mind, maybe. 

And he hadn’t because he kissed back with the same amount of enthusiasm as before and Alex entertained the thought of just staying in the dark and warm bar, kissing until it they tired of it. But then he focussed back on Miles’s tongue on his, insistent and perfect, and on the way it was making his cock feel. He broke the kiss, or the series of kisses, to place a couple on Miles’s neck and near his ear. ‘Let me take you home, Miles,’ he said, more softly and less sexily than he would had liked. 

Miles looked at him, leaned in to kiss the corner of his mouth, gave his bum a pat and gave a decisive nod.


	4. Chapter 4

Alex expected the cab ride to be spent in a semi-awkward silence, but as soon as they got in and he sidled up to Miles, there was a secure arm around his shoulders that he leaned into. He felt invited to kiss, so he did, Miles’s neck, because that was his favourite place so far, and Miles squeezed his thigh in return, then proceeded to make patterns on his inner thigh with his thumb. 

‘You’ve been lonely?’ Miles asked into Alex’s hair, a very late afterthought from the bar. 

‘Maybe,’ Alex smiled at him, their faces level now. ‘How you been?’

‘Busy,’ Miles kissed him, ‘you know that, though.’

Alex mhhhm-ed at him and leant back. He suddenly felt a rush of sympathy for the cabbie that had been turning the radio up with every sentence. Miles complied, easing his grip on Alex and leaning his back against the window. 

‘You went to see that movie that was on?’ Alex stretched his legs out so he slumped further into the seat. 

Miles giggled at his attempt to make conversation, but sighed and complied, ‘Never got the chance mate.’

Alex nodded. ‘Heard it was good, apparently.’ 

‘Yeah? From who?’ Miles poked his ribs. 

‘Jus’…somebody. Don’t matter.’ Alex grinned at him.

‘Ya haven’t been lonely at all, have ya?’ Miles cackled and kicked Alex’s legs with his a little. 

Alex shrugged and smiled, then pulled Miles close by his jacket so they could kiss and Miles went easily. 

 

Once in the flat, they toed their shoes off and Alex threw his jacket on the side table by his door, then watched Miles struggle out of his and before the man could even attempt to hang it up, he was leading him further in through the corridor by the mouth. 

They ended up on Alex’s bed, Miles with his back to the headpiece and Alex sat astride his thighs, Miles’s shirt buttons undone and his skin inviting. Alex broke the kiss they were engaged in, letting a soft grunt out as he struggled to assume a good position and resume the kisses now down the front of Miles’s throat, licking his Adam’s apple and smiling in satisfaction when Miles’s little sighs got a bit louder as he made his way downwards. 

Once the expanse of skin that was Miles’s toned torso was adorned with kisses, Alex made work of his fly and Miles grunted a little as he kicked his jeans off and placed his hand into Alex’s hair. Alex understood that as permission and so he continued licking and kissing down the insides of Miles’s thighs, then pulling his boxers down and off and he barely noticed when the soft sighs that Miles had been letting out gained that desperate edge as Alex got his mouth on Miles’s cock and began working it, slowly at first, pulling off and licking up the length playfully and then getting a bit lost in it and taking all of him in, bobbing his head and breathing through it as he felt the head at the back of his throat. His fingers were making marks on Miles’s thighs that were maybe shaking a bit now, but Alex didn’t mind. As embarrassing as it was, he enjoyed having any sort of tangible effect on Miles, because his grunts were so different from the disaffected monotone he’d used that Sunday.

He only pulled off once Miles’s tugging at his hair became more painful than before and when he faced him, Miles’s eyes were glazed over and swimming. He still pulled Alex up to kiss him, much more passionate now than before and his hands were now burning hot when they made their way up Alex’s torso and pulled his t-shirt off. Miles immediately attached his mouth to his chest, licking over his nipples and making Alex realise how much noise he’d been making the whole time as he moaned once more. 

Miles attached their lips and got his leg around Alex, pushing and pulling on his arm until they exchanged positions, Miles hovering over him and Alex’s stomach churning with excitement. Then Miles got his hands on his trousers and pulled them off, making Alex slide down the bed a little, at which Miles giggled and kissed his lips again, cupping Alex’s cock at the same time and rubbing until Alex slid his arms from around his shoulders to his waist and pulled them flush together so they could both enjoy some friction and Miles pushed his boxers down and got his hands on both of their cocks, spitting in his palm and jerking them off. Alex joined him, groaned and threw his head back into the pillow where Miles found him and kissed his mouth raw. 

Once Alex could get his head to stop spinning, he pushed on Miles shoulder and got him to move his hands into his hair and kiss his jaw instead. He took a coupe of studying breaths, his hand on the back of Miles’s neck and Miles pulled away. 

They stared at each other for a bit. They’d never seen each other like that before and Alex got the feeling that they were working on some sort of temporary magic that would run out if they weren’t snogging and touching all the time. 

‘Will you fuck me?’ ‘Do you want this?’ They asked at the same time, making Alex giggle a little, because of course he did. Miles smiled a little smile, just lifting the corner of his mouth and Alex reached for the bedside table to pull out the necessary items before he could ask. 

Miles got his fingers slick and kissed Alex hard, Alex’s mind blanking out and only coming back when Miles’s fingers were at his entrance and Miles’s mouth was lifted from his navel. 

‘Al, you sure?’ Miles asked very seriously and Alex gave him a nod.

 

Alex woke up to an empty bed. He didn’t bother opening his eyes to confirm this, the lack of warmth next to him was enough to know. It felt like a lack of warmth somewhere at his left lung, too. 

He stretched his arms out and forced his eyes open. There was a commotion in the kitchen. His breath quickened. 

Sure enough, a fresh and fully dressed Miles emerged from the doorway and raised a hesitant hand in greeting. 

‘I made you breakfast.’ 

‘Ta,’ Alex looked him up and down, ‘Why are you not staying?’

Miles sighed and looked out of the window, then back at Alex, soft in his white sheets. ‘I’m afraid you’ll discover that you don’t want me to,’ he let out and met Alex’s eyes. 

Alex’s heart fell through the bed and onto the floor, for some reason. He sighed and cast his eyes downwards, perhaps somewhere near where his heart was. 

‘Stay anyway?’

Miles smiled. He moved towards the bed hesitantly and then sat down next to Alex’s cocoon. Alex took a hold of his arm and pulled until Miles fell down next to him, heads touching and Miles’s legs hanging off the side of bed. He didn’t seem to mind that his freshly styled hair was going to get ruined.

Alex turned his head to meet Miles’s cheek with his nose and watched Miles’s eyes close slowly. He turned his face back up towards the ceiling. 

‘It still feels like we’re enemies,’ Alex grunted softly, like a child. 

Miles sat up and looked at him amusedly. ‘Are we still not lovers?’

Alex shook his head. When he stopped, Miles got his fingers in his hair and kissed his forehead, then his nose, then his lips. It was making Alex all kinds of confused. Nothing seemed to be cleared up with the sex, unlike he’d planned. 

‘How ‘bout a movie night tonight? At mine,’ Miles asked, his fingers still in Alex’s hair. 

Alex’s eyebrows knotted up in a question. Miles was still massaging his scalp. 

‘Okay,’ he whispered, ‘why?’

‘We can’t be both enemies and lovers,’ Miles stood up and made a couple of steps towards the door, ‘maybe it’s time we remembered how to be friends again.’


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so sorry it took so long!

Alex showed up at Miles’s place at nine, sporting his most comfy trackie bottoms and a hoodie he guessed was likely not his, because the sleeves reached some good five centimetres below where his fingers actually ended. It was extremely soft, though, so he decided it was appropriate. A bottle of wine was settled in his arms, cradled like a baby, he had his cigarettes and his lighter, keys, and that was it. 

Miles opened the door with a smile. He, too, was wearing sweatpants and a loose-fitting top. It had always been Miles’s movie night policy to wear the most comfortable, and possibly ridiculous, clothes possible. His hair was visibly wet and Alex was fairly certain he would have been able to smell his shampoo, had it not been for the aroma of cheese that seemed to be filling up the flat behind Miles. 

Alex rose his palm in greeting and Miles gave a nod, then took a step forward, then backwards, and then nodded again and let Alex into the flat. So much for not being weird and not making it awkward, Alex thought as he made his way into the kitchen. 

‘What’re you making?’ Alex glanced around the kitchen and set the wine onto the cleanest counter. Not that the rest were particularly dirty. Miles was a surprisingly good and organised cook. The lack of mess was also explained when Miles came over and expressed that he was making mac n’ cheese.

‘Can I help you with that?’ Alex joined Miles at the stove where Miles was mixing his macaroni into the cheese sauce and he immediately got his finger into the delicious substance to lick it off, delighted by the rich taste. He did love cheese. And Miles always insisted on making his own sauce, as well. It made it so much more delicious. 

Once he was out of his fantasies, he could see Miles’s stare fixed on him, bemused and expectant. 

‘Well?’

Alex took the wooden spoon from him and took a proper mouthful, now with the pasta, chewing and humming comically. It was funny enough to make Miles chuckle and to cause his shoulders to drop an inch or two, so Alex was satisfied with that performance. 

He was not, however, going to let the meal go without proper critique. ‘Needs more cheese, mate,’ he announced through the abundance of sauce already in his mouth. 

Miles cackled, ‘No, it doesn’t. You wouldn’t even like that, Al,’ he poked Alex’s ribs, ‘it’s already extra cheesy.’

Alex smirked and swallowed, leaning his elbows on the counter and stretching his legs in front of him to watch Miles strut over to the fridge. ‘Well then I wan’ it _ultra_ cheesy tonight,’ he announced, nose high in the air and a smirk barely kept off his face. 

He kind of regretted saying that, because Miles responded with a sigh into the fridge and when he turned around, he was still smirking, but his eyes were cast downwards. He came over with a block of parmesan.

‘Well, for an ultra cheesy supper:’ he handed the cheese to Alex and turned to his cupboards. 

‘How cheesy do you want it?’ Alex asked into the cupboard he was fetching the grater from. 

Miles sighed very heavily and cocked his hip to lean against the counter. ‘I don’t want it cheesy at all, to be honest with ya, man,’ he looked up at Alex, who was holding the block of parmesan, toes curling and uncurling in his big socks. 

‘Okay,’ Alex told the bowls on the counter and grated cheese into both of them. 

 

The half-full wine bottle was set on a coaster on the coffee table and it kind of prevented Alex from seeing the tv from his position, but that was okay. They weren’t watching anyway. 

It had been a couple of hours, the pasta bowls empty and guarding the kitchen counter. Alex was sprawled on the sofa with his head nearly hanging off of it, Miles’s legs tucked under where Alex’s were flung over the backrest. A blanket was thrown over them, mostly covering Alex only, with the exception of a half of Miles’s legs. 

They’d been talking. Somehow, Miles’s idea about becoming friends again had worked, or was working out, because Alex felt at ease and Miles seemed to feel the same. It had begun with Alex’s commenting on whatever Miles had put on, but soon enough they found themselves circling through the well-known territory of their topics, gossiping about past lovers some, new records, that-one-time-whens, and references to obscure films only they seemed to know. Alex was almost scared to acknowledge how good they were doing at having fun without him thinking too hard about how far away Miles seemed to be sitting.

In an effort to not acknowledge that they were having fun, Alex forgot to have fun. Dread seemed to have started flowing to his head from his raised legs instead of blood. There was a possibility that Alex would never be able to have fun with Miles ever again if he wasn’t allowed to kiss him, too. Because hearing Miles talk and giggle, delicate hands gripping the wine bottle in dangerously precarious ways, was only good until Alex started craving to taste the laugh for himself. He almost felt greedy for it. 

‘You know, I think she didn’t understand that, but to be fair, I—Al?’ Miles put a hand on Alex’s arm that was also dangling off the sofa.

‘Ya?’ Alex leaned further down to inspect the carpet. 

Miles huffed, ‘Al.’

Alex rose his dangling torso onto the couch and turned around to sit next to Miles in a less bat-style fashion. ‘Hm?’ He turned to Miles with a polite smile. 

Miles watched him for a bit, the tiniest smirk on his face. He sighed and took his glasses off, ‘We’re having fun,’ he announced the diagnosis, ‘Al. That’s allowed. Even if you’re lovers.’

Alex smiled, ‘Thank god you can read my mind,’ he whispered to Miles’s lap, because looking him in the eye seemed too daunting at the moment. 

‘Thank fuck.’

‘Huh?’

‘How’s that good?’ 

Alex failed to understand why one would need explaining that. ‘Well, because I…you. Because you get me. Like that,’ and he snapped his fingers for emphasis. 

‘And you never tell me what you want,’ Miles leaned to take a gulp from the bottle on the table. 

Alex watched him drink. Didn’t he? Did he really never say? Had he not asked Miles to come home with him and asked him to stay in the morning? And then he came to Miles’s slumber party in order to become friends, all without even once asking Miles where they stood in his big scheme of things where Miles seemed to be so sure of if they were friends, lovers, or enemies and how those things worked, exactly.

‘No,’ he took the bottle from Miles, ‘you never tell me what you want.’

Miles leaned back into the armrest, eyebrows high on his forehead and his eyes searching.

‘It’s always me being all fuckin’…foolish and juvenile,’ Alex took a breath, ‘I can’t get enough of you and I want to kiss your neck and I always end up in your lap and I take you home. It’s always me, and you _let me_. You let me, you’re like a wise old oracle. It’s all up to me to make the interpretation. You knew we were lovers before I did. And you just…just went with it. It’s you who knows what we’re doing and you refuse to share with the class,’ Alex was a bit surprised at where that had come from, his voice having grown a little hoarse as he spoke, ’Don’t tell me you don’t know what I want, please.’ 

Miles took a breath. ‘Okay. Al, you’re unpredictable. I never know when you’re gonna find a girlfriend and leave me for a bit again,’ he rubbed his eyes, ‘I don’t know what we are. But it does converge with lovers at some point. And maybe I’d rather not focus on that, because if I do I might just go crazy. There.’

‘Why?’

‘Because I really like you. And it’s much easier to share friends you really like with others than it is sharing your favourite lovers. I hope that doesn’t shock you.’

Alex took a breathing break and Miles fidgeted. 

‘So that’s why it’s your call,’ Miles said softly, ‘because sadly, I’ll take anything.’

‘Okay,’ Alex said, 'what if I tell you what I want?’

‘I’ll do it then, I guess,’ Miles shrugged. 

‘I want,’ he ran out of words, ‘uh, everything, I s’ppose. Anything you can give,’ he looked at Miles, somewhat small and static on the couch, ‘all the friendship and the love and the hate you have.’

Miles smiled just a little bit, ‘What in exchange?’

Alex grinned at him. He felt little happy bubbles in his stomach, ‘The same, I guess.’

Miles kissed him. Finally, Alex thought, he got to taste that smile on his face. Unsurprisingly, it tasted of cheese.

**Author's Note:**

> you can find me on Tumblr at hemovesthemoon and yell at me about how shit my writing is and I'll open some wine and agree with you.


End file.
